Kraken coach Lane Lambert, upon joining the team last spring, was shown the since-retired Davy Jones Hat created by Bruckheimer early in the franchise’s existence to be handed out in the locker room to the player of the game following any Kraken victory. The team replaced that hat with a wrestling belt last season.
But the F-1 movie was coming out just as Lambert was hired. Bruckheimer did an advance screening of the movie for Kraken players and staff and Lambert felt it had an inspirational message that could be applied to the team. So, he asked the Kraken whether they could get Bruckheimer to secure a helmet exactly like Pitt had worn to play fictional driver Sonny Hayes in the movie, figuring his players would quickly take to it as a postgame award.
Kraken president of hockey operations Ron Francis knows Bruckheimer well dating back to when the producer first helped CEO Tod Leiweke conduct his general manager search and final interviews back in 2019. Francis got on the phone to Bruckheimer.
“Jerry came through again,” Francis said.
Bruckheimer loved the helmet idea. “It’s a really cool idea,” he said. “I mean, they’re really cool helmets.”
So, he reached out to the film’s owners for permission to have an authentic replica made.
“After they said yes, I contacted the manufacturer, Bell Racing and said, ‘Here’s what we want to use it for, can you figure something out for us?’,” Bruckheimer said. “And they said ‘Sure!’ and went to work on it.”
One challenge was racing helmet interiors are all custom molded to fit driver heads precisely.
“When they made the helmet for Brad (Pitt), the interior was molded to the exact shape of his head,” Bruckheimer said. “In racing, that’s how they do it. So, in this case, we had to get an extra special, extra-large helmet made so that it would fit the head of every player.
“So, it’s the exact helmet that we used in the movie. It’s just a larger size.”
The APX GP 2005 helmet, a name referencing the fictional racing team and car from the movie, also has the No. 7 and a “Sonny” signature on it just as Pitt’s character Hayes wore. And Bruckheimer agreed the new victory helmet does carry inspirational significance that fits what the Kraken are trying to do.
Asked to sum it up, he replied: “Winning.”
He then expanded on it a bit.
“Look, in the movie it was an underdog driver, right?” Bruckheimer said. “And we have an underdog team.”
A team, he added, where “winning” is the prime objective just as it was for Pitts’ character Hayes.
“And he won,” Bruckheimer noted.
So did the Kraken on opening night. Afterwards, the new victory helmet was unveiled in the locker room to Kraken players for the first time and, in a fitting moment, was handed out to Joey Daccord – who coincidentally is a huge F1 fan who does promotional work for the circuit on the team’s social media accounts. Daccord had stopped 35 of 36 shots in being named the game’s first star.